One Mile North of Normal and Other Poems

You are invited to visit Henrietta Hornsby's Museum of Tragical Hairstyles, Bison World, a haunted bookshop and the mysterious Caf Sotano. Take a few natural science lessons for the gullible and you'll meet a baby vampire rat, a zombie rabbit, the blue-skinned moaning lilygator and a disco-loving chicken. The author interviews her dog, finds friends living in bowls, conjures up ancient relatives, sails through the center of the earth to see a wind beast's collection of unusual antiques, and learns the secret to growing old. Here you'll find a poem of wintering with bears, and on about the three little withdrawn pigs. Watch as a celluloid lover steps from the flipping film of a hundred-year-old Mutoscope projector. Learn how to replace your old, worn and wrinkled head with a new one in Plasto-rubberized Ecto-skin coating. Take a side-trip to the Island of Terrible Friends, to Bog Down and to the cartoon cat retirement home. Betty Boop, St. Nick and Rube Goldberg also make appearances in the author's poems that all happily exist one mile north of normal.